Irene Klotz is Senior Space Editor for Aviation Week, based in Cape Canaveral. Before joining Aviation Week in 2017, Irene spent 25 years as a wire service reporter covering human and robotic spaceflight, commercial space, astronomy, science and technology for Reuters and United Press International. She also worked with Discovery Communications, Discovery News and was a founding member of Space.com.
Irene cut her teeth on the space beat at Florida Today newspaper, a business writer enchanted by the colorful entrepreneurs who wanted access to Air Force launch facilities and assets after commercial payloads were taken off the space shuttles following the 1986 Challenger accident. Commercial space remains the focus of her work, along with a keen interest in the search for life beyond Earth.
A graduate of Northwestern University, Irene is the 2014 recipient of the Harry Kolcum Memorial News and Communications Award, named in honor of the late Aviation Week managing editor and Cape Canaveral senior editor who was among Irene’s earliest mentors.
NASA and International Space Station partners are assessing the effect of the shutdown of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s control center in Tsukuba following the 8.9-magnitude earthquake that hit Japan on March 11. JAXA oversees the station’s Kibo laboratory complex, as well as the HTV-2 cargo ship docked at the station’s Node 2 nadir port. NASA control centers in Houston and Huntsville, Ala., took over control from JAXA after Tsukuba was evacuated on March 11. Damage assessments to the center, located 30 mi. northeast of Tokyo, are under way.
CAPE CANAVERAL — A classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) lifted off aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta 4 rocket on March 11. The 211-ft.-tall Delta 4 blasted off at 6:38 p.m. EST from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 37. The rocket used a single common booster core with a Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) RS-68 main engine; two Alliant Techsystems GEM 60 solid rocket motors; a PWR RL10B-2 upper-stage engine; and a 4-meter-dia. upper stage and composite payload fairing.
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — Fresh on the heels of shuttle Discovery’s return from its final spaceflight, shuttle Endeavour reached the launch pad on March 11 for preparations to deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the International Space Station during the STS-134 mission. The launch, scheduled for 7:48 p.m. EDT on April 19, will be the 25th and last flight of OV-105, the replacement orbiter for Challenger that first flew in 1992.
